24 
Land & Water 
May 2, 19 1 8 
RIVERS I have seen which were beautiful, 
Slow rivers winding in the flat fens, 
With bands of reeds like thronged green swords 
Guarding the mirrored sky ; 
And streams down-tumbling from the chalk hills 
To valleys of meadows and watercress-beds. 
And bridges whereunder, dark weed-coloured shadows. 
Trout flit or lie. 
I know those rivers that peacefully glide 
Past old towers and shaven gardens, 
Where mottled walls rise from the water 
And mills aU streaked with flour ; 
And rivers with wharves and rusty shipping, 
That flow with a stately tidal motion 
Towards their destined estuaries 
Full of the pride of power ; 
Noble great rivers, Thames and Severn, 
Tweed with his gateway of many grey arches, 
Clyde, dying at sunset westward 
In a sea as red as blood ; 
Rhine and his hills in close procession. 
Placid Elbe, Seine grey and swirUng, 
And^Iser, son of the Alpine snows, 
A furious turquoise flood. 
All these I have known, and with slow eyes 
I have walked on their shores and watched them. 
And softened to their beauty and loved them 
Wherever my feet have been ; 
And a hundred others al§o 
Whose names long since grew into me. 
That, dreaming in Ught or darkness, 
I have seen, though I have not seen. 
Those rivers of thought ; cold Ebro, 
And blue racing Guadiana, 
Passing'white houses, high-balconied, 
That ache in a sun-baked land, 
Congo, and Nile and Colorado, ' 
Niger, Indus, Zambesi, 
And the Yellow River, and the Oxus, 
And the river that dies in sand. 
What splendours are theirs, what continents. 
What tribes of men, what basking plains. 
Forests and hon-iiided deserts. 
Marshes, ravines, and falls ; 
AU hues and shapes and tempers. 
Wandering, they take as they wander 
From those far "springs that endlessly 
The far sea calls. 
O in reverie I know the Volga 
That turns his back upon Europe, 
.\nd the two great cities on his bcmks, 
Novgorod and Astrakhan ; 
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Where the world is a few soft colours. 
And under the dove-Uke evening 
The boatmen chant ancient songs 
The tenderest known to man. 
And the holy river Ganges, 
His fretted cities moonhght-veiled 
Arches and buttresses silver-shadowy 
In the high moon. 
And palms grouped in the moonlight 
And fanes girdled with cypresses 
Their domes of marble softly shining 
To the high silver moon. 
And that aged Brahmapootra 
Who beyond the white Himalayas 
Passes many a lamasery 
On rocks forlorn and frore, 
A block of gaunt grey stone walls 
With rows of little barred windows. 
Where shrivelled young monks in yellow silk 
Are hidden for evermore. 
But O that great river, the Amazon, 
I have sailed up its gulf with eyeUds closed. 
And the yellow waters tumbled round, 
And all was rimmed with sky. 
Till the banks drew in, and the trees' heads. 
And the lines of green grew higher 
And I breathed deep, and there above me 
The forest wall stood high. 
Those forest walls of the Amazon 
Are level under the blazing blue 
And yield no sound save the whistles and shrieks 
Of the swarming bright macaws ; 
And under their lowest drooping boughs 
Mud-banks torpidly bubble. 
And the water drifts, and logs in the water 
Drift and twist and pause. 
And everywhere tacitly joining 
Float noiseless tributaries. 
Tall avenues paved with water : 
And as I silent fly. 
The vegetation hke a painted scene, 
Spars and spikes and monstrous fans 
.\nd ferns from hairy sheaths up-springing 
Evenly jiasses by. 
And stealthier stagnant channels 
Under low niches ot drooping leaves 
Coil into deep recesses : 
And there have I entered, there 
To heavy hot, dense, dim places 
Where creepers chmb and sweat and climb, 
And the drip and splash of oozing water 
Loads the stifling air. 
